What we have is a failure to communicate

Imagine a municipal Web site where you can pay your water and sewer bills and business taxes, apply for plumbing and electrical permits and report a pothole.

Imagine a Web site where you can find out what legislation is pending before the municipal council -- such as an ordinance making it illegal to wear your pants so low that your underwear or the skin below your waist is visible.

Well, Newark has a new city Web site, and none of that stuff is available.

Those features are part of Atlanta's official Web site. I also checked the Johannesburg, South Africa, Web site. It has a pretty classy setup, too.

I use those two as standards be cause Ali Sharif did. He's the son of Newark Mayor Cory Booker's campaign manager and also the principal of the 6Sixty Group, which got a $1.5 million communications contract from the city last year. He said those two cities were the examples Newark was going to emulate.

The execution falls short of the "ideation" -- Sharif's word, not mine. Newark's online site is still a place where the calendar of events has no events, where many of the links are dead and the FAQs, or frequently asked questions, fre quently leave the questions unanswered.

Some of the department pages have lists of people to contact and phone numbers. Some, like the Department of Neighborhood and Recreational Services, which deals with many day-to-day needs and services, do not.

The top link for the Fire Department provides a hopeful message: Coming soon.

At least that's how the site looked yesterday. I'm not sure what'll you'll find today because it seems that someone is burning the midnight oil trying to complete the Web site -- which was supposed to be a finished product when it hit the Internet.

Wednesday, I could not find anything that remotely resembled a city directory. Yesterday, from the "Home" page, I clicked "Government," then "City Departments" and got a directory. Was it fresh or had I just missed it on previous tries?

I dialed a few numbers at random. Illegal dumping? After 20 rings, I gave up. Animal bites? The recorded voice of a pleasant-sounding woman told me she was away from her desk and provided the fax number to use if I wanted an educator to come talk to my group about health.

For some reason, the Prudential Center, Newark's new arena, is tucked onto the Web site's "Public Safety" page. Perhaps that's be cause on any event night "The Rock" is the best place in town to find a cop.

The Police Department page has a good list of contact numbers. I'm going to try them sometime. But for everything else, from traffic information to a photo line-up of Newark's most wanted, the department's own, separate Web site is much more useful. It's no more frilly than Police Director Garry McCarthy. It is run by a lone police officer. I asked the department's spokesman for information about the officer and the department's Web site budget. I haven't heard back yet, but I'm guessing they don't pay the police Web guy $1.5 million.

In a city with a lot of problems, picking on the Web site might be nitpicking. Because Newark has a lot of problems, I'm guessing that most people go to the Web site looking for help in time of trouble, not for mission statements and icons. I fault any government Web site that does not make it easy to access a directory of correct, working numbers.

Also, Newark is a city that has a budget crisis and a new administration that has pledged to end the friends-and-family contracting that the previous bunch raised to an art form. Under those circumstances, a $1.5 million contract handed to the son of the mayor's campaign manager should at least deliver what it promised on time -- no excuses.

The Web site gets a failing grade.

Yes, there are more important things, and it is time to give the city good marks for some of them. Violent crime is down. The city says it has balanced the budget. There was no property tax increase this year, and that is good news -- unless holding taxes steady was a setup for a whopper of an increase "coming soon."

March 1 is coming up, the third anniversary of my one-month assignment to keep an eye on City Hall. Now is a good time to grade Cory Booker's administration. I want to be fair. I'll need help.

I want to hear from anybody who lives or works in Newark and has something to say about what the administration is doing, right or wrong, better or worse.

My phone number and e-mail are below. Let me hear from you. You can also tell the mayor what you think. I found a couple of "Contact the Mayor" buttons on the Web site. One was dead. The other one gave me an "ERROR!" message. I'm sure that will change soon.

http://www.ci.newark.nj.us/

Joan Whitlow may be reached at 973-392-4239 or jwhitlow@starledger.com. To comment on her column, go to NJVoices.com.